2014 Lessons Learned: The Negative

[Aren Siekmeier]

Originally Posted by dcarr

In 2014, getting a quality webcast is apparently a hard thing to do.

Except it's not. Please fix this. Baseline HD stream requirements for all events. Include equipment/connectivity/staffing in budget or find a team/volunteers who can handle it.

Multi-cam setups are ideal for the big screens at the events, but for online, a single full-field view is optimal. Perhaps offer both?

This year we got a full field setup, though low resolution, of North Star up and running using a GoPro with a wide angle lens. Since then we've done a little research into ways to make this cheaper and more portable. The GoPro (or similar) provides up to a 170 degree field of view with a special lens, which can see the full field from only 3 feet away. It also streams in HD over its HDMI output, but this requires an HDMI capture card, bringing the price tag up to around $500 for camera and capture equipment. We ended up finding this camera with a 120 degree field of view (full field coverage from 15 feet away) and HD streaming ability over USB, all for just $40. We use the powerful open source OBS streaming software, which supports chromakeying for the FMS scoreboard overlay, multiple layers for multiple video inputs, selecting between audio channels, and many other options. OBS also supports most standard streaming hosts: we have so far used it with Justin.TV with success.

While we haven't tested any of this new equipment yet, we hope to in the offseason and next season. There are also several others (1678, FiM, etc.) who have developed their own full field streaming. I am hoping in the next year we can develop some standard set of equipment and software that could possibly be shipped with each FRC field and staffed by event volunteers in order to make HD full field coverage a reality for every event.